Friday 4th March - Queenstown to Te Anau

Continuing south the road follows eastern shore of Lake
Wakatipu and runs between the lake and the Remarkables Mountain range, another
very dramatic and scenic route. The scenery softens into pasture land -
with sheep, cattle and deer - as the road heads south and then turns west to Te
Anau. There's quite a lot of deer farming in the South Island, but as far
as we could see, cattle still out numbered both deer and sheep. Te Anau is on
the southeastern shores of Lake Te Anau, in the Fiordland National Park,
the largest of the many National Parks in NZ, and the Park is within
the Southwest New Zealand World Heritage Area. There are 14 fiords (they spell
it with an i not a j) in a huge remote area (8,000 sq miles or more) and as
approaching Te Anau the high mountains of Fiordland could be seen. We had
planned for a 4 night stay here, making it the longest stop of the
trip. The attractions of this area are its remoteness, its
mountains for climbing and trekking, the fiords and its wildlife.
Two of the fiords - Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound are world famous
for their breathtaking beauty and grandeur and we had booked in Queenstown to
visit both, taking a gamble on the weather. Would we be lucky? Being on the
west coast and high up, this area takes all the rain that comes from the
west, so it rains on average 2 days out of every 3 and the annual
rainfall in the Sounds is a whopping 8 metres (26ft), compared with 2ft in
London. The forecast suggested that Sunday and Monday would be better days so it
was to be Milford Sound on Sunday and Doubtful Sound on Monday. The Sounds are
not sounds (drowned river beds), but true fiords cut by glaciers. When first
discovered and named as sounds by Europeans they didn't realise. The
names have been retained, but to correct it the whole area is now called
Fiordland. True to forecast, Saturday was a dull day with some rain and was
spent looking around Te Anau. We hoped things would improve for
Sunday.

Pastures along the road approaching Te Anau, with mountains
behind. Yes, these are sheep. We have

still seen very few. If there really are 40 million sheep in
NZ there must be a field somewhere

with about 39,800,000 sheep in it! We're beginning to think 40
million is a myth!

Lake Te Anau. It's 38 miles long and the largest lake in the
South Island.

Read the notice. We would have to go a long way off the beaten
track to stand a very small chance

of seeing these nearly extinct birds
in the wild, but ......

..... fortunately they have a captive breeding program to try
and increase numbers.

The 2 they have in the bird sanctuary at Te Anau both decided
to come out in the

open while we were there.

Other birds that can be seen in the Fiordland National Park, if
you know where to go. Many are
very

rare, due to introduced predators - stoats, weasels and rats.
In many areas they are trying to trap and

kill these to give the native birds a chance to
survive.

The local pipe band was marching around town, collecting money
for the Christchurch Earthquake